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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24340777">Royalty Suited Her</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewolvescalledmehome/pseuds/thewolvescalledmehome'>thewolvescalledmehome</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>A Song of Ice and Fire &amp; Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Era, F/M, Jon Snow is King-Beyond-the-Wall, Post-Canon, Sansa Stark is Queen in the North, lil bit of angst</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 07:27:17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,685</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24340777</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewolvescalledmehome/pseuds/thewolvescalledmehome</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A year after Sansa is declared Queen in the North, she receives a raven stating that Jon has abandoned his position as a member of the Night's Watch and has been named King Beyond the Wall. She knows someone expects her to act on this information, but she has something else in mind.</p><p>For the Jonsa Royalty Event on tumblr.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jon Snow/Sansa Stark</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>170</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Queen Sansa Jonsa Event</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Royalty Suited Her</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I was writing this and realized a lot of bitterness about the ending came out.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>Jon</strong>
</p><p>Jon told himself not to look back. He told himself that there was nothing for him there. He told himself if he turned around, he would never move forward, move on.</p><p>It was the third time Jon had had the same conversation with himself. The first was when he left Winterfell to go South, to retrieve the dragonglass. He told himself then that he hadn’t had a choice. That he had to go South.  He hadn’t known then that he had had a choice. He hadn’t known yet what it actually meant to not have a choice.</p><p>He was unable to stop himself from turning around that time. Sansa had stood on the battlements watching him. <em>Winterfell belongs to her anyway,</em> he thought. <em>By rights, she should have the title, the lord’s chambers. </em>Him leaving made things easier for her. <em>And you could never have her anyway</em>, he reminded himself.</p><p>The second time, he turned back twice, both times he looked to Sansa. Both times, he had to tell himself the same thing he said when he first left Winterfell after being named King. <em>You could never have her anyway.</em></p><p>It was harder that time, after the truth had been revealed about who his parents were. About his relation to Sansa. They had never been siblings, half or otherwise. What he had been feeling wasn’t as abominable, as offensive as he thought. It still made his gut twist with disgust when he woke from dreams where she was the one he lay with in that cave, not Ygritte.</p><p><em>You still can’t have her</em>, he scolded. <em>Even if she’s no more than a cousin. She’s the heir to Winterfell and you’re a bastard still.</em></p><p>Bran had claimed that Rhaegar and Lyanna’s marriage was legitimate, and Sam’s book said the prince’s marriage to Elia was annulled, but the maesters of the citadel questioned the validity of the annulment, of his legitimacy. Everyone who had known about it had died, and the only evidence was barely more than a footnote in some tome.</p><p>Jon didn’t blame them. If he was legitimate, the son of Rhaegar and heir to what was once the Seven Kingdoms, it would be much harder to walk away from Sansa.</p><p>It was easier if he was a bastard still.</p><p>The third time Jon told himself to not turn around, he looked back just once. It was the first time that Sansa wasn’t there for him to look at one last time. He knew she wouldn’t be there—he knew she was in Winterfell—but a part of him, a stupid part, had still hoped.</p><p>Had still hoped that his last memory of her wouldn’t be on the docks in King’s Landing.</p><p>He wanted something else to remember of her, a memory that wasn’t so painful.</p><p> </p><p>As Jon journeyed North with Tormund and other Free Folk, he forced himself to think of something other than Winterfell, of the life he might have had.</p><p>Instead, he found himself remembering a different life he may have led. If he had accepted Stannis Baratheon’s offer when he was still a brother of the Night’s Watch. If he had married Val and become Lord Stark of Winterfell. She had been meant to marry one of Stannis’s knights, but he had died before Selyse could follow through with the notion.</p><p>Jon had heard no mention of her since his resurrection. He wondered if she used the disorder surrounding his death as a shield to flee. He wondered if she survived the Others and the White Walkers who marched South.</p><p>She was beautiful, he recalled. Lovely and lonely, a warrior. She was as graceful and poised as any Southron lady.</p><p>He could have her. Val wasn’t so far beyond his reach as a highborn lady.</p><p>Val wasn’t so far beyond his reach as Sansa.</p><p>He could have had her in a way he would never have Sansa.</p><p>But Val would never be Sansa.</p><p>And Jon would never be anything more than a bastard, no matter what Sam’s book said.</p><p>He would always be Jon Snow and he would always be a bastard in the eyes of the people who mattered.</p><hr/><p>
  <strong>Sansa</strong>
</p><p>As Sansa read the scroll, she was increasingly relieved that she was alone when she received it. She knew why it had been sent. It had been sent because they—probably someone from the Iron Islands or one of the Southron Kingdoms—wanted a reaction from her. Why else send that Jon Snow had, in the year since his banishment, deserted the Night’s Watch and been named the King Beyond the Wall?</p><p>She was the Queen in the North, and since the Wall and what lay beyond was a part of the North, even if only directionally, this fell into her responsibilities.</p><p>After the events that ended the war, Jon had been banished in order to appease factions that she thought had no right to be dictating Westerosi politics. Sansa hadn’t thought the punishment fair. She had the intent to go to war—the fourth in her lifetime—if that was the only way that Jon would be returning to Winterfell. Where he belonged.</p><p>His returning to the Wall, to that obsolete order, was smoke and mirror she thought. The Wall was a part of the North. As queen, she technically had control over everything from the Neck into the Gift. She could easily pardon him and invite him back to Winterfell.</p><p>Sansa had done just that, weeks after she returned from the South, but her ravens had gone unanswered until she received a response stating that Jon Snow was not at Castle Black.</p><p>At the time, she assumed that he had been sent to one of the other keeps along the Wall. She had thought nothing else of it, other than considering that perhaps the Wall was where he wanted to be.</p><p>He hadn’t seemed to fight the exile—just grimly accepted his fate.</p><p>She wondered if he thought he deserved it—or worse. By rights, he was a queenslayer. Kinslayer, even. In another time, he might have been executed. But Jaime Lannister had been a kingslayer as well, and the deed had earned him a position as a part of the Kingsguard.  </p><p>In truth, that was the position she had hoped to assign him. The captain of her Queensguard. The only other person she would trust with her life was the Ser Brienne.</p><p>A year after her declaration as the Queen in the North, she still hoped that she would wake and find it was Jon guarding her chambers, and not some knight.</p><p>A year after Jon departed for the wall, she still woke in the middle of the night, not from the terrors she had suffered when she first returned to Winterfell, but from dreams that she would find Jon by her side.</p><p>When her and Jon first reunited, Sansa had thought the warmth was due to her not having seen a member of her family since she had been but a child. She had thought the warmth was relief at finally being safe.</p><p>After a year of hardship, winter, and war, a year apart, she was beginning to consider that perhaps there was something more to the warmth she felt around Jon.</p><p>After receiving the raven about Jon’s declaration of being King Beyond the Wall, she suspected it may be an opportunity to discover the truth.</p><p>The people of the Southron Kingdoms expected her to take action, and though the thought of Jon being king made her smile, she could at least give the illusion of action.</p><p> </p><p>Not a few days later, Sansa traveled North with a small party of her most trusted Queensguard members. The ones she both trusted with her life and the ones she trusted not to betray her or the North.</p><p>She would not be the first queen to visit the Wall—the Good Queen Alysanne had, as had Stannis Baratheon’s wife, though she was more a shadow of a queen than a crowned one. Sansa doubted the histories would remember either Selyse or Stannis as kings and queens. They would no doubt be noted as naught but rivals for the throne.</p><p>She allowed her thoughts to be consumed by remembering her histories as she traveled North. She recited from the time of the First Men through the Conquering and into Robert’s Rebellion. Sansa found it easier to think of the far past than of what lay ahead.</p><p>If she considered what may come for too long, she thought she may talk herself into returning to Winterfell.</p><p> </p><p>Sansa found that arriving at the gates of Castle Black brought a flood of emotions from the previous time she had faced the very same gates. Then, she had been fleeing from Winterfell and from Ramsay. Jon had been her only hope.</p><p>She had been a ghost of a girl then, haunted by monsters and demons.</p><p>Sansa had remembered how she was unable to sit tall on her horse, how she shivered from not the cold, but from fear. Fear that Jon would be another man looking to use the Stark name.</p><p>She remembered how she saw him on the battlement and she realized how stupid she had been. They may have spent years apart, but Jon was still Jon and in his arms was the first time she felt truly safe since leaving Winterfell with her father.</p><p>When she arrived this time, it wasn’t Jon that greeted her. He was a man in a black cloak whom she didn’t know. After only a handful of moments, she realized none of the men she had met last time were there now. They were either all lost in the wars or had gone North with Jon.</p><p>When she inquired about Jon, the poor boy stuttered.</p><p>“He’s gone North, Your Grace. He no longer wears a black cloak.”</p><p>“Do any of your men know where, North?”</p><p>Sansa had seen maps of Westeros, but she had never studied the land beyond the Wall closely. It had never been a focus of her studies. She had been far more interested in the South.</p><p>“There are a few rangers who could lead you to him, if that’s what you desire.”</p><p>“Please.”</p><p>While Sansa knew she wasn’t the first queen to visit the Wall, she suspected she may be the first to travel beyond it.</p><p>The old Kings of Winter hadn’t dealt with the Wildlings for thousands of years. They had rallied alongside the Night’s Watch on occasion, but not in any recent history that she recalled learning. Even when Winterfell’s armies fought the wildlings, it was only due to their having traveled South, into or beyond the Gift. Never had one of the Starks of Winterfell traveled North to summit with them.</p><p>Sansa spent a single night at Castle Black to allow for the men to gather provisions. She slept in the same chambers she had the first time she visited.</p><p>She struggled to not stare at the fireplace, mesmerized by the phantoms of her and Jon sitting in front of it, drinking ale from horns.</p><p>The memory was a sharp contrast to the man she had left at the docks in King’s Landing. The Jon she had reunited with at Castle Black may have been troubled by his deeds, but he wasn’t haunted by them. The Jon she had reunited with had been able to smile, to laugh. The one she had seen on the docks had offered the barest ghost of a smile as if he had been incapable of actually being happy again.</p><p>When she had sat in this selfsame chamber before, Jon had wrapped his cloak around her shoulders and had gifted her a set of wool tunic and breeches to stay warm. Then, the gesture had meant naught to her. Now, she felt a flush remembering that she had worn the same clothes he had. His nakedness had touched the same seems of cloth as hers.</p><p>Sansa swallowed at the thought and turned away from the fireplace. She couldn’t afford to think such thoughts. Not as the Queen in the North.</p><hr/><p>
  <strong>Jon</strong>
</p><p>“Riders approaching, Lord King.”</p><p>Jon looked up to see Satin crossing the hall. Satin been one of the handful of brothers who both survived the wars and choose to follow Jon beyond the Wall. After nearly a year with the Free Folk, he still used the titles of the kneelers. Most of the Free Folk didn’t bother with titles or other aspects of nobility. Jon may be King Beyond the Wall, but to most he was still Jon Snow.</p><p>“Rangers?”</p><p>“It appears to be a mixed party. Rangers, but there’s a woman with them.”</p><p>“A woman?”</p><p><em>Arya</em>, he thought. She must have returned from her sailing adventures to visit him at the Wall, where he was supposed to be.</p><p>“Aye, ser.”</p><p>Jon pulled his cloak around his shoulders, fastening the clasp at his neck. It wasn’t the black cloak on the Night’s Watch he wore anymore, but it also wasn’t the cloak he won back Winterfell in. It was a cloak given to him by a spearwife when they named him king. It was grey in color—a mockery of both his Night’s Watch cloak and the Stark cloak. He knew it hadn’t been done intentionally—Free Folk were practical people and they didn’t bother with learning House colors. The accuracy of the cloak pained him. He was no longer Jon Snow, bastard son of Ned Stark and he was no longer Jon Snow, Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch. He was King Beyond the Wall and he had no use for cloaks with meaning now.</p><p>Jon followed Satin from the hall and through the small village to the gates.</p><p>He could see the small party approaching—no more than five riders. He could also see the woman with them wasn’t Arya, as he had suspected. No, this woman’s hair shone like firelight even at a distance.</p><p><em>Sansa</em>.</p><p>Jon was instantly taken back to when she had arrived at Castle Black. He remembered how his heart stopped again briefly, how he thought she was a ghost, come to haunt him.</p><p>His heart stopped this time too, but not because he feared her to be some otherworldly specter. His heart stopped because she was far more beautiful than he imagined her in the dreams that tormented him.</p><p>Royalty suited her, he thought.</p><p>She sat tall and regal upon a white horse, a crown with the Stark sigil perched on her brow. If he thought time and distance would diminish the vile feelings he had for her, he was wrong.</p><p>If she had been a spearwife, a woman of the Free Folk, he might have run to greet her, pull her from her horse and steal her away to his chambers.</p><p>Sansa was not a woman to be stolen, even if she hadn’t worn a crown.</p><p>“Have the Crows named a queen?” one of the Free Folk asked.</p><p>Jon had been so distracted by the sight of Sansa that he hadn’t considered the significance of the Queen in the North riding beyond the Wall.</p><p>He had been sent to the Wall as punishment. He was meant to spend the rest of his stolen days in exile, holding no title, no lands, and taking no women. Jon had left the Watch and been named King Beyond the Wall.  </p><p>If the Queen in the North had journeyed to see him, it was for political reasons. This was not Sansa Stark visiting the man who was once her half-brother, the man she rode to war beside. This was a queen coming to meet with a king.</p><p>Jon Snow was in trouble and not just because of how rapidly his traitorous heart pounded.</p><hr/><p>
  <strong>Sansa</strong>
</p><p>After they had retaken Winterfell, Jon would sometimes share stories of the time he had spent with the wildlings. Sansa had come to think of them as a nomadic people, ones without roots or homes.</p><p>That was not what she saw when they arrived at the village they said the King Beyond the Wall resided in.</p><p>It was settled, civilized. No different than some of the smallfolk townships that existed in the more remote regions of the North.</p><p>There were children chasing each other around buildings, and people gathering at the gate, watching their arrival.</p><p>She barely noticed the faces staring at her. All she could see was Jon.</p><p>He wore no crown, the way she did, but it was clear by the way his men stood around him that he was the person in charge. His shoulders were straight and his head held high, so different than he had been on the docks of King’s Landing.</p><p>Jon motioned for them to open the gates. Sansa rode into the village and stopped in front of Jon and his men.</p><p>She supposed there was some protocol she ought to follow, a queen visiting a king. Instead, she leapt from her horse and threw herself into Jon’s surprised arms.</p><p>“I’ve missed you,” she whispered, allowing herself a single moment to be Sansa and not the Queen in the North.</p><p>Jon didn’t return the sentiment, but she felt his arms tighten around her waist, holding her with such grip she could scarcely breathe. She felt his breath shudder against her neck and it made something deep within her burn and smolder.</p><p>When she stepped back, she thought she noticed something changed about his eyes, but he looked away for she could place it.</p><p>“We can talk in the hall, Your Grace.”</p><p>The use of her title cooled the heat she had been feeling. To her, he was still Jon—her Jon. She had addressed him personally, not as a king. Was he offended that she hadn’t greeted him similarly? Sansa wasn’t one to forgo the rules of decorum and etiquette.</p><p>She should have sent word she was coming to treat and they should have met as equals. Not her arriving unannounced and immediately hugging him. That was far too familiar.</p><p>Sansa should have known better. She should have acted as a queen would, not a woman.</p><p> </p><p>In the hall, they were joined by several of his men, few of whom she recognized. They watched her warily. She noticed how they eyed the crown she wore.</p><p>It was then she noticed that Jon wore no crown, nor did he sit on a throne. The hall was similar to the one in Winterfell, except there was no head table. When Jon sat with his men, she realized he must sit as one of them, not separated the way she did.</p><p>“How can the Free Folk help you, Your Grace?”</p><p>Jon had positioned himself across the room from her, his men at his side. That changed look she thought she saw after they embraced was long gone.</p><p>His men clearly didn’t trust her or the fact she’d traveled all this way, into their lands. She knew Jon could put them at ease, explain who she was, but he didn’t.</p><p>“I-I had hoped we might speak privately, Your Grace.” Sansa had tried to keep her voice even, but the idea of being alone with Jon had made her heart pound. So had addressing him with his proper title.</p><p>Jon must have not expected her to use it because he looked at her sharply, his eyes looking as they had after their hug.</p><p>“Leave us, please,” Jon ordered after a pause. Sansa watched his men hesitate before they obeyed and left them alone.</p><p>“Are you here to order me back to the Wall?”</p><p>The lack of title didn’t escape her notice. Nor did how formally he still stood.</p><p>“Is that why you think I’ve come?”</p><p>“I’ve deserted the Order and broken my vows double fold. Why else would the Queen in the North travel beyond the Wall?”</p><p><em>Because I am weak,</em> Sansa thought. <em>I wanted to see you again and I am weak.</em></p><p>“I did receive a raven telling me that you had been named King Beyond the Wall,” she admitted.</p><p>“And you came here to what, execute me for desertion? To exact a punishment beyond my exile?”</p><p>“Jon, I…” Sansa swallowed, steeling her heart. “I came to see if you were happy.” Her voice was soft, not at all steel or even porcelain. It was lace.</p><p>His laugh was rough. A bitter bark.</p><p>“Happy? You traveled beyond the Wall to ask if I’m happy?”</p><p>A sickening blush flowed over her. <em>Stupid, stupid, how stupid</em>.</p><p>“I know you must have come for a different reason, Sansa. I may play dumb but I’m not.” His voice was coarse as stone. “I thought you of everyone had known that.”</p><p>Sansa’s breath shook. How could she say that she had come all that way just to see his face again?</p><p>“Are you?” It took everything she possessed to ask. “Is this everything you ever wanted?”</p><p>“I’m happy to have my head.”</p><hr/><p>
  <strong>Jon</strong>
</p><p>“Are you? Is this everything you wanted?”</p><p><em>It’s nothing I’ve wanted</em>, Jon wanted to answer. Being a king, being with the Free Folk, it had never been what he had once dreamed of.</p><p>“I’m happy to have my head,” Jon answered because Sansa might have been his half-sister once, but now she was the Queen in the North and he would do well not to forget that.</p><p>“You know I didn’t agree with this.” Her voice had grown quieter and Jon found himself crossing the room so he could hear her. “I wanted you to return to Winterfell, with us. I…I wrote to you, at Castle Black.”</p><p>Jon remembered receiving those ravens. It had been his first days back in the Order. He recognized the wax seal and couldn’t imagine what she would possibly want him, so he burned them all unopened. The ravens stopped as soon as he left Castle Black.</p><p>“I wrote to pardon you, Jon. I wrote to invite you home.”</p><p>The word <em>pardon</em> echoed in his head. If he had been pardoned, he could return to Winterfell. He could still hold lands. Take a wife, maybe. Have a son.</p><p>But he could do that now and he could do it without being subjected to the stares and judgment of others. He could do it without being called a queenslayer. He saw what that had done to Jaime Lannister, how it had broken him into a shell of a man.</p><p>Jon had died once for his actions. After all he had lived through, it seemed futile to die for something so stupid.</p><p>He knew he would die if he went South and watched Sansa be courted, be wed.</p><p>“I have everything I need,” he answered. It was the truth, because he could never have everything he wanted.</p><p>Sansa didn’t speak for a moment.</p><p>Jon wished he could speak to her without pretense, the way they had in the tent before they battled the Boltons. Time and distance and the effects of the wars left them mistrustful.</p><p>She was Queen in the North now, and he would do well not to forget that.</p><p>“What about an alliance?” Sansa posed. Jon could see from the position of her head and the tilt of her jaw that she wasn’t Sansa now. She was the queen.</p><p>“An alliance?”</p><p>“Between the North and the Free Folk.”</p><p>“They’re not kneelers. They won’t become your subjects. And I’ll not bend the knee for another queen.”</p><p>That wasn’t entirely true. Jon would eagerly get on his knees for Sansa, but the Free Folk wouldn’t, and they trusted him to ask them not to bend the knee. He was their leader, but only by their choice, not through force or empty gestures.</p><p>They called him their king because they trusted him, because he earned it.</p><p>They would not call him king if he asked them to join kingdoms with the North, independent or not.</p><p>“I’m not asking you, or them, to kneel. We would exist as independent kingdoms with an alliance. It could benefit both kingdoms.”</p><p>Jon didn’t know how the Free Folk would feel about being considered a kingdom, but he supposed recognition as an independent entity was better than what they had before. When he was Lord Commander, Jon had married Alys Karstark to Sigorn, Magnar of Thenn, and had hoped to settle some of the Folk in the Gift, where the land was more fertile and forgiving than it was beyond the Wall.</p><p>If they had an alliance with the North, it would be easier to settle the Gift.</p><p>“What do you propose?”</p><p>“A marriage alliance.”</p><p>Jon blanched at that. He didn’t want to admit where his head went.</p><p>“I don’t think Arya would agree to that.”</p><p>“I’m not talking about Arya.”</p><p>His heart thudded, but he tried to calm it.</p><p>Jon had been this exact situation once before, when they were trying to retake Winterfell. When Davos had said that Jon didn’t have the Stark name. Sansa had said <em>I do. </em>His stupid heart had thought she was proposing marriage.</p><p>That was when Jon realized that maybe the warmth he felt when he was around Sansa had nothing to do with her being the only woman he had spent time around since Ygritte. Or the fact that she also had red hair.</p><p>He knew better this time. She was suggesting marrying some daughter of a Northern lord to a magnar or some equivalent. It would have to be that way. No spearwife would marry a Northern lord.</p><p>Unless he found Val. He could imagine her managing a household as a lady.</p><p>“Jon? Did you hear what I said?”</p><p>“About not marrying Arya off?”</p><p>“About us being the best option for a strong alliance.”</p><p>Jon had not heard her correctly. He had absolutely not heard her correctly because it sounded as if she was suggesting that <em>they</em> marry for the alliance.</p><p>He could see it as clearly as he had the last time. The life that was so far beyond him that he didn’t allow himself to dream about it. His children with the Stark look, the Stark name, running around Winterfell without fear of being chastised for existing. Sansa lying beside him, her skin soft against his own. The warmth that came with the image burned.</p><p>Jon swallowed against it. He couldn’t accept her offer. Not with how he felt and not with all she endured.</p><p>He couldn’t explain that to her, though. He couldn’t say <em>I can’t accept your offer of marriage because I’m in love with you</em>.</p><p>“What could the North gain with an alliance?” he asked instead.</p><p>“Hunting grounds,” she responded promptly. “And lumber.”</p><p><em>Hunting grounds and lumber.</em> Jon could have laughed. Those were two things the North was not lacking.</p><p>“And you,” Sansa whispered. “The North would gain you.”</p><p>Jon looked at her sharply, his blood pounding as it had when she had addressed him as <em>Your Grace</em>.</p><p>The urge to kiss her had overwhelmed him when she had called him that, but that was improper. She was a queen.</p><p><em>And you are a king</em>, a voice whispered. They were equals in writing, even if he still felt like the bastard he had been. Even if he was a crownless king, he was a king.</p><p>Jon turned to her then, and the hope and warmth in her eyes nearly made him tremble.</p><p>“Aye,” he murmured.</p><p>She released a sigh then, a little laugh, and looked at him, seemingly suddenly bashful.</p><p>Sansa closed the space between them slowly, and Jon felt the few inches of air between them turn heady. Her hand reached up as if to touch his cheek.</p><p>“May I?” she breathed. Jon gulped, every muscle in his body coiling as he nodded.</p><p>Her touch was softer than he imagined, and her kiss was as tender as he dreamed.</p><p>It was more than everything he had ever wanted, which was why he pulled away.</p><p>“Are you certain? Is this the match you want?”</p><p>“What better match for a queen than a king, Jon?” she whispered against his lips and Jon’s arms enclosed her, swearing he would never let go.</p>
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